The Chief Operating Officer for American casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corporation has criticised the UK Government’s about-turn on super-casinos.

William Weidner also revealed that his company is no longer interested in running any casinos in Britain after the Government scaled back its plan to open a super-casino in Manchester.

'We spent a lot of time with the folks in Britain trying to figure out how to do a larger style of gaming,' said Weidner.

'That didn't work. Mr Brown pretty well shut that down.'

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is rumoured to have pulled the plug on plans to build a Las Vegas-style super-casino in Manchester after calling for a review of the idea last year after months of campaigning by religious leaders and others, although no official announcement has yet been made

However, Brown is still expected to give the go-ahead for 16 smaller venues across the country but Weidner stated that the smaller casinos now envisaged in Britain would not be large enough to appeal to the big US operators and would be better suited to local operators such as Gala Coral and Rank Group.

'The home team won,” Weidner said.

“The operators there in the UK worked the system very well so they ended up with what they wanted, what I would consider to be sub-optimal, lousy little casinos that kept them in the game and kept us out.

'And so they have the worst of all worlds. Casinos that won't drive visitors in from further away and they'll just have larger places that take more of the money off the local people.

'If we'd have known the game was stacked against us, we wouldn't have wasted jet fuel going over there.”